Fans of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon weren’t thrilled when they got their first look at its sequel, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny. Like Ang Lee‘s picture, the sequel is based on a five-part series, written by Wang Dulu. Despite going back to the source material, plenty of fans labeled the sequel a cheap cash grab.

The Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon 2 reviews are in, and most critics are still calling the film a cash grab.

I’m stepping on Christopher Stipp’s toes a little bit here; he’s been doing a great job with his column This Week in Trailers on Fridays, but here it’s only Tuesday and we’ve already got a trio of indie clips to show off. So rather than wait for the roundup I’ll present this varied package of trailers now, and free up space for Christopher to talk about other stuff at the end of the week.

So, after the break, we’ve got a trailer for the Sundance film Unmade Beds, a thriller called Across the Hall which marks the feature return of Brittany Murphy (and is an expansion of an existing short film) and a fundraising clip for a Goonies-like project called Slayers. Read More »

A couple years ago Alex Merkin made a short film called Across the Hall, which ran the film festival circuit. Entourage‘s Adrian Grenier starred, and festival-goers compared the Merkin short to a modern day Hitchcock flim. On February 6th Merkin will go into production on an expanded feature length version of the film noir thriller starring Mike Vogel (Cloverfield), Brittany Murphy and Danny Pino (Cold Case). But if you have a few minutes, check out Merkin’s brilliant original 16 minute short film at the links below: